Adil Najam
Pakistan is a land of creative cell-phone ringtones. Sometimes, I feel, a little too creative.
You are sitting in a meeting with some very self-important and staid people – officials, businessmen, buzurg grandfather types – and one of their cell-phone rings: and the ring-tone is a computer synthesis of “Sanou Nehr Waaley Pul Tey Bulla Kay” or “Nawa Aaya Aye Soonia.”
Even though the first is one of my favorite Noor Jahan songs and the second my all-time favorite movie, my head spins and I wonders if in a society where everyone is always so proper and so cognizant of “loug kiya sochaiN gay” (what will people think?), cell-phone ringtones are like catharsis. One of the things that lets people show that little bit of their “fun side” that they were otherwise suppressing. Kind of like the otherwise all-too-serious professor in the US coming to class wearing a Mickey Mouse tie (I actually own more than one of those).
Yet, it seems that the vigilantism of the piety police that is the extremist fringe in Pakistan wants to even snatch (literally) this little pleasure from us.
Here is a small news item in the Daily Times (January 18):
Militants snatch computers from ringtone shops
LANDI KOTAL: Local Taliban militants snatched computers from ringtone shops in the main Landi Kotal Bazaar on Thursday, sources said. Earlier, they added, the militants had warned them to stop downloading ringtones onto mobiles, terming it an “un-Islamic†practice. Around 10 armed Taliban came to the bazaar and took away computers from ringtone shops at around 5pm.
Whatever else you do, folks, please do not try to answer the question in the headline. It is rhetorical. Frankly, I have very little interest in what anyone, least of all some militants, have to say about this and I am sure that God has far more important things to deal with right now than how my cell phone rings.
I have chosen to write about this question because I think there are two types of people who do take things like this seriously. So serious are they in their beliefs that they are even willing to condone violence in the name of those beliefs. I am afraid of what the fanaticism of these two extreme groups can lead to, especially in Pakistan.
One type are the puritanical extremists within Islam who think that they and they alone have a monopoly on piety and theirs and only their view is right and who are willing – even eager – to impose, even violently, their view on all others. The Taliban, of whatever ilk, are one such group. The second type are those who obsess about things that are supposedly wrong with Islam and who love to believe such nonsense because it reinforces their existing prejudices. Who are prone to taking such actions by the extremists and then project it as if all Muslims are like this. This set of people are often equally extreme in their beliefs.
Luckily, neither is a majority. Unfortunately, the ranks of both are swelling. Oddly, but not surprisingly, these two extreme types have much – too much – in common; including the monopoly they think they hold over the truth.
Sadly, but also not surprisingly, these two groups are probably the biggest threat to Islam and Muslims today, including and especially in Pakistan. Even though I fear their impact and influence in Pakistan and on Pakistan, I – like most Pakistanis I know – reject the message of both these extreme groups. I prefer, instead, to listen to cell-phone ringtones that go “Sanou Nehr Waaley Pul Tey Bulla Kay” or “Nawa Aaya Aye Soonia.”
These terrorists could not operate themselves without cell phone and you see them operating through these fancy sattelite phones and cell phones for communication as well as for bomb triggering. So, who do they have on their phones if they do not like ringtones and bells because they are all music?
Well not that you’ll make an honest effort to write about that, but even highlighting such a notion gives me comfort.
Pinpointing the stubborness of such people who would propogate such ideals on the convenient ride of religion is fine with me. Nobody can deny that this extremism would eat us from inside like its already doing while i write.
Let me give you my two categories of people who are a threat to our stability and cohesion as a society.
Enough said abt the religious zealots and their “satanic” plots …… what abt the the secular extremists.
In my view, some of the misconceptions that arise in people with religion as a code of life, is due to what they see as a percieved threat to ISLAM in our society.
While there was alot of hopla blabber regarding the introduction r rather deletion of religion course materials from our text books, there is some truth in that also.
I’ve myself seen the new textbooks and they are not as comprehensively demonstrative of our national heroes than it ever used to be.
WHile we have the convenince of deliberating on such moves from a distant angle, parents whose kids will be in the line of fire of such education have the right to be suspicious of the motives behind such actions..
The phrase that We’ve got much bigger problems than this is not valid anymore because this religious divide has left us first bedazzled, now befuddled and perhaps soon bemusing as the biggest threat we could have hoped to avoid.
The fact is that these ringtones ca really be really annoying. But, still, that is no reason to become violent.
Interesting thing. When you open this post in full you see a set of ads come up right at the top of the page. I guess these are generated automatically by google. Guess what the first ad is there right now. It is for “MUHAMMAD RINGTONES”. I wonder what the Taliban have to say about that :-)
Just something to lighten up the mood :-). No offense intended.
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Bertrand Russell